Don Hertzfeldt‘s World of Tomorrow. “To date, the peak of Hertzfeldt’s work has been the triptych feature It’s Such A Beautiful Day, about one man’s fear that he won’t be able to control his genetic predisposition to mental illness,” wrote the Dissolve‘s Noel Murray on his first day at Sundance. And with World of Tomorrow, Hertzfeldt “may have topped” himself. “Visually, the film continues Hertzfeldt’s recent trend toward density. He starts with his usual spare lines, as a toddler named Emily, punching away at some kind of electronic device, is visited by an adult clone of herself from a distant, forbidding future. As the future-Emily describes the extreme social stratification and continued blurring of the lines between technology and biology in her culture, the animation becomes more colorful and trippy, as Hertzfeldt himself mixes cutting-edge techniques with hand-drawn characters.”

“There are more big ideas packed into this 16 minute film than there are in most major studios’ entire catalog of science fiction,” writes Dan Schindel at Movie Mezzanine. “Here the traditionally analog filmmaker has embraced digital for the first time. The result allows his animated creativity to flourish, untethered by restraint. Vivid color shifts and zany geometric designs rove our view. There is so much packed into each shot, yet it never feels confused or overwhelming.” And “there’s no irony in World of Tomorrow’s ultimate point: that the only things that are truly valuable, in the end, are our memories. That is, after all, what we as sentient beings are made of. No matter how we evolve, our emotional cores will persist.”

“Hilarious and heartbreaking in equal measure,” agrees David Ehrlich, who interviews Hertzfeldt for Little White Lies.

“Antarctica is an unusual project that’s been turning around in my head for a very long time, uncertain how it would get made, and I’m excited to actually have the chance now to take the plunge with Keith, Jess, and their brave team,” said Hertzfeldt. “After twenty years of animating alone, this will also mark the first time I’ll have the opportunity to work with a talented team of animators, and I’m looking forward to being able to walk into a room of hard-working artists every day and telling them that everything they’re doing is wrong."